Get to Know TIS

05-09-2022 | treasuryXL | TIS | LinkedIn |

To give their clients the best treasury, payments, and liquidity management software and support possible, TIS is continually expanding and developing. Download the “Get to Know TIS” Factsheet to view the most recent details about their business and solution portfolio.

Source

Get to Know TIS

Read the factsheet to learn more about TIS. The purpose is to summarize each area of our business in order to educate readers on all the core capabilities, value-added services, and general operational expertise that TIS offers to clients.

This resource also highlights relevant stats, figures, and metrics that demonstrate TIS’ position as a global leader in enterprise payments and liquidity management. For more information about the capabilities that TIS offers or to better understand any aspect of our solution suite, request a private demo with one of our experts by emailing [email protected].

 

You can find the factsheet here

CFO Perspectives: How to set a currency hedging strategy

30-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

How should a CFO set their currency hedging strategy, to protect cash flows or to minimise P&L impact? In the fourth edition of CFO Perspectives, we’ll explore how senior finance professionals can choose the right path when it comes to hedging.

Credits: Kantox
Source

According to a recent HSBC report, the objectives of currency hedging are pretty extensive. While three-quarters of surveyed participants mention forecasted cash flows as an FX risk that their company hedges, 61% cite balance sheet items as the risk they hedge. Other participants say minimising the impact on consolidated earnings is one of their FX hedging objectives and KPIs.

The debate about whether to hedge cash flows or earnings —by removing the impact of accounting FX gains and losses— is as old as currency hedging itself. The two sides have powerful arguments in their favour.

Cash flow hedging vs balance sheet hedging

What’s the correct approach?

The debate will likely never be settled entirely. No single approach for currency risk management is definitively better than another. Different opinions may reflect the type of business activity, the preferences of investors and even managers’ own biases.

The key step for any CFO looking to establish or revamp their business’s currency hedging program is to clarify what the firm is trying to achieve. Only with enough clarity on this matter can the dangers of ad hoc or unsystematic hedging be avoided. 

So, where does that leave us? This blog brings some welcome news to beleaguered CFOs as they take sides. While nothing replaces clarity regarding the key objectives of currency management, technology now makes it possible for risk managers to:

  1. Use a single set of software solutions to run cash flow and balance sheet FX hedging programs
  2. Automate the time-consuming and resource-intensive process of implementing Hedge Accounting

This is big news indeed!

Practical steps on the journey to the FX hedging decision

While a certain amount of debate and discussion is unavoidable when deciding the goals of a firm’s FX hedging program, a number of practical steps can be followed to determine what should be hedged.

These steps share a central concern about protecting and enhancing the firm’s operating profit margins by giving particular importance to the pricing characteristics of each business division.

These steps include:

  1. Steer clear of ad hoc or unsystematic hedging. This is a path to nowhere and should always be avoided.
  2. Set the goals of your FX strategy, such as defending a campaign or budget rate, achieving a smooth hedged rate over time, hedging transaction exposure, or removing the impact of accounting FX gains and losses.
  3. Based on these goals, define the best hedging program while imagining that infinite resources can be deployed. By doing so, CFOs can squarely focus on their FX goals.
  4. Consider using Currency Management Automation to seamlessly execute all the steps of your program, breaking internal silos and ensuring connectivity with your own company systems (ERP, TMS).
  5. Only then ‘prune’ the strategy and adjust it to the available resources, while measuring the impact —in terms of risk, costs and growth— of this adjustment.
  6. Use technology to automate the process of compiling the required documentation for Hedge Accounting.

In other words: to set a currency hedging strategy you need to do away with outdated constraints. Technology is putting to rest the traditional view of currency management as a resource-intensive activity. So the message is: give priority to your FX goals, not to the resources currently at hand.

Read the third edition of our CFO Perspectives series, 5 ways CFOs can increase the efficiency of treasury operations.

What is a Cash Conversion Cycle?

24-08-2022 | treasuryXL | CashAnalytics | LinkedIn |

Did you know that on treasuryXL you can find information on all relevant treasury topics? One of the concepts you can find information on is the Cash Conversion Cycle.  A business’s cash conversion cycle (CCC) is a measurement of how much time it takes to turn a cash investment in the business into a cash return in the form of sales. CashAnalytics can tell you all about how to calculate your CCC, what makes a good/bad CCC and how to shorten your CCC.

Original source

Find out:

  • How to Calculate Your Cash Conversion Cycle

  • What Is a Good Cash Conversion Cycle?

  • How to Shorten Your Cash Conversion Cycle (Sustainably)

  • Sustainable CCC Improvements Require Reliable Real-Time Data

Read what Cash Conversion Cycle is all about

 

CFO Perspectives: 5 ways CFOs can increase the efficiency of treasury operations

16-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

In the third edition of CFO Perspectives, we’ll draw from our work with CFOs to explore five ways senior finance executives can increase the efficiency of treasury operations using purpose-built software solutions. 

Credits: Kantox
Source

According to a recent HSBC report, as many as 81% of CFOs view the digitisation of treasury processes as an area of increasing importance. The same survey shows that technology has moved from ‘nice to have’ to a key differentiator for treasury. 

The good news is that ‘special purpose’ technology exists that —working alongside your existing systems (TMS, ERP)— allows CFO’s and finance teams to dramatically boost the efficiency of treasury operations.

In this blog, we briefly present five areas of improvement across the FX workflow. Taken together, they present a unique opportunity for CFOs to turn the ‘digital treasury’ into a day-to-day reality, allowing members of the finance team to remove operational risks while devoting more time to value-adding tasks.

Improvements across the FX workflow

Currency management is a process undertaken in three different phases. In the pre-trade phase, FX-related pricing is managed alongside the crucially important collection and processing of the firm’s exposure. The trade phase, quite naturally, is concerned with trade execution, primarily through forward FX contracts. Finally, the post-trade phase covers accounting, reporting and analytics processes and the ‘cash flow moment’ of payments and collections.

In all of these phases, easy-to-install software solutions provide tangible improvements in terms of the efficiency of treasury operations.

These improvements include:

Improvement 1: Set a strong ‘FX rate feeder’

Pain point: Commercial teams often lack the capability to use the currency rates they need to price in a data-driven and efficient way. With favourable forward points, they could use the forward FX rate to price more competitively without hurting budgeted profit margins. With unfavourable forward points, pricing with the forward rate would allow them to remove excessive markups.

Improvement: Whatever the number of transactions involved, automated solutions to price with the required FX rate can be quickly scaled to all the required currencies, with the pricing markups per client segment and currency pair requested by commercial teams.

Improvement 2: Process all types of exposure

Pain point: When it comes to collecting the firm’s exposure to currency risk, most Treasury Management Systems (TMS) are designed with accounts receivables/payables in mind. While this works fine for balance sheet hedging, the focus on accounting items precludes the automation of cash flow hedging based on the exposure collected earlier — firm commitments and forecasts for budget periods. 

Improvement: API-based solutions allow finance teams to automate the crucially important process of capturing the relevant type of exposure information and run a variety of cash flow hedging programs, including combinations of programs that require more than one type of exposure data. 

Improvement 3: Connect the phases of the FX workflow

Pain point: The trade phase of the FX workflow is where most of the attention of CFOs has been placed, as Multi-Dealer Trading platforms such as 360T have reduced the cost of FX trading for corporations. But while the execution of trades is oftentimes manually initiated, most systems lack the capability to fully automate the process of triggering trades.

Improvement: What special-purpose software brings is the capability not only to automate the trade part of the workflow —via connectivity with Multi-Dealer platforms—but also to link it to the pre-trade phase as well by ensuring that trades are executed at the right moment in time.

Improvement 4: Automate Hedge Accounting

Pain point: Compiling the documentation required to perform Hedge Accounting can be a costly and time-consuming process, as hedge effectiveness is assessed in by comparing changes in the fair value of the hedged item to changes in the fair value of the corresponding derivative instrument. This forces companies to rely on highly skilled personnel to manually execute these tasks.

Improvement: The perfect end-to-end traceability of automated solutions makes it possible accounting team to automate the painstaking process of compiling all the required documentation to perform Hedge Accounting – allowing CFOs to cost-effectively provide more informative financial statements.

Improvement 5: Automate swap execution

Pain point: The process of adjusting the firm’s hedging position to the cash settlement of the underlying commercial exposure is one of the finance team’s most resource-intensive and error-prone tasks. It can require an enormous amount of ‘swapping’, particularly for companies that manage many commercial transactions in different currencies.

Improvement: Swap automation, a task that most TMS are unable to perform, is a key feature of Currency Management Automation software. Perfect traceability allows members of the finance team to automatically ‘draw on’ or ‘roll over’ existing forward positions while removing operational risks.

Read the second edition of our CFO Perspectives series, 5 asset management tactics CFOs should borrow from when managing FX risk.

Payment Platforms & Collections in China

11-08-2022 | treasuryXL | ComplexCountries | LinkedIn |

Cryptocurrency, digital wallets, virtual everything – there is a huge amount of change. China has been at the forefront of a lot of digital trends, partly due to the fact it had an antiquated banking system which has been thoroughly modernised, and partly because the explosion of internet shopping in the country required a digital payments solution. This is a challenge when there are no credit cards.

Source

This report is based on a Treasury peer Call which explored how this is affecting members’ companies, and how they are adapting to this brave new, digital, world.
  • Most participants are accepting payment using WeChat Pay and Alipay. None is using these tools to make corporate payments.
  • The collections process using these tools is efficient and effective: you work with a third party (usually accessed via a banking provider), who will transfer the funds to your account the following day. One participant did an RFP, with two Chinese and two foreign banks, and found the service was identical – though pricing was different, and not transparent.
  • There was no mention of billbacks, the excessively high fees and acquirors which blight the use of credit cards in other countries
  • The one complaint all participants had was the difficulty linking this process to internal systems, for the reconciliation of receipts or for compliance purposes in terms of identifying the source of cash. The third party companies do provide detailed lists of payors, but it can be difficult to upload these into the ERP system.
  • There was a lot of discussion about travel expenses. The low acceptance of credit cards in China complicates the automated links which often exist between credit cards and T&E management and control systems. Allowing employees to use Alipay and WeChat Pay generally raised problems in terms of obtaining adequate receipts. One participant’s company was doing extensive auditing of travel expense claims, but this is expensive.
  • One company is using virtual credit cards to solve some of these issues, while one is routing payments made on AliPay and WeChat Pay via credit card providers to get the automated expense reporting.
  • Another issue was that, in some cases, sales teams had opened Alipay and WeChat Pay wallets for customers to pay into – but there was no way to stop them from taking this cash to pay themselves. The solution is to require all collections to go via the third party providers, who are under instructions to only remit the cash to the Company’s bank account.
  • Most B2B collections still go through bank transfers or BADs (Bankers’ Acceptance Drafts). One participant is introducing controls to ensure BADs are only accepted if drawn on banks with an acceptable credit profile. Some participants are making payments by endorsing customers’ BADs to their own suppliers. There are some collections by cheque.
  • On the payments side, most participants are making payments via the banks’ host to host systems, or using the payment tools in their TMS products. Participants are using a variety of local and foreign banks: ICBC and Bank of China got the most mentions amongst the Chinese banks, with a spread across Citi, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank for the foreign ones. Kyriba was the TMS mentioned.
  • One participant is using Pcards for small value purchases – but this is not easy.
  • One participant was struggling with customers who have operations in both mainland China and Hong Kong, and who regularly make payments out of the wrong entity.
  • One participant has experience of linking their IT systems directly to the banking system, to get reporting from all their banks. While possible, this requires a lot of IT work.

There as also a discussion about cash pooling: this works in China.

Bottom line: China is at the forefront of innovation in dematerialised payments. As one participant put it, it has become very hard to use old fashioned cash.

But, as this is China, things are not straightforward!

This report was produced by Monie Lindsey based on a Treasury Peer Call chaired by Damian Glendinning

To access this report:

Access to the full report is available to Premium Subscribers of ComplexCountries. Please log in on the website of ComplexCountries to access the download.
Please contact ComplexCountries to find out about their subscription packages.

What Does Real-time Connectivity Mean for Your Organization?

08-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Kyriba | LinkedIn |

Nowadays if you work in treasury, probably not a day goes by without you seeing a social post or article from your subscribed newsletters on the topic of real-time Bank API. It stands for the future of bank connectivity, and it will change the way data is exchanged between corporates and banks. Trent Ellis, Senior Solution Engineer at Kyriba, spends his time assisting clients to evaluate what works the best for them from a solution point of view, with both their current and future business needs in mind. In his discussions with clients and prospects, bank connectivity has always been a focus area and recently he noticed a growing interest in real-time Bank APIs.

 

By Trent Ellis, Senior Solution Engineer

Source

When it comes to real-time bank connectivity, the first thing I usually tell my clients is that it’s important to delineate between the different data flows such as inbound balance reporting, transaction details, confirmation reporting and outbound payment initiation. When an organization plans to make real-time bank connectivity a reality, the first thing they should do is to look at their data flows from daily operations. Identify and determine what data would benefit from a real-time update? Which items are critical for that real-time treasury decision making? Where are you going to maintain the balance and transaction data once it is received or payment data prior to it being transmitted to the bank?

Next, because many banks have grown their footprint by acquisition, bank accounts held in different regions (even regionally within a country) can be on different platforms with different technology. Therefore, within a single bank, API readiness can have a different status for different subsets of bank accounts based on branch and geographic location.

Now that the bank may have made an API connection available, how are you going to connect to it? Do you look at internal technical expertise and availability? Do you look to a third-party vendor? Consider a specialist that just does API connections or a TMS vendor that has other integrated modules and additional functionality beyond just the bank connection for statements and/or payments?

Real-time Bank Reporting, what does this really mean?

Banks are now offering bank balance API’s as well as transactional statement APIs, but sometimes not (yet) both. It’s more than likely not the same as what you would get from that same bank in the form of a BAI or MT940 standard bank statement as banks are still working on what data becomes available through the API. Bank balance reporting is important for real-time liquidity monitoring but will not always help your treasury or AP team confirm the status of a cleared payment, or the status of an important cash credit.

Yes, an API can deliver data in real-time but is the underlying platform that holds that data providing real-time data? Some banks are providing their “real-time” data on a predefined schedule throughout the day which means it is not what most would consider “real-time”. True real-time reporting requires process changes at the bank. Decreasing update time from day to hours or within the hour is an improvement that is easier to absorb without restructuring the process.

Real-time payments, what does this really mean?

Real-time payments are payments that are cleared and settled nearly instantaneously. Real-time payments are generally facilitated by domestic or regional payment infrastructures on a 24x7x365 basis including weekends and holiday.1

Many may not be aware that globally real-time payment infrastructures have been around for as long as 40+ years, and real-time payments can be enabled via FTP or API based on Bank / FI’s offerings and the connectivity option preferred by the corporate customer. Relatively, it has been a recent development in the US payment ecosystem. In November 2017, The Clearing House launched the first real-time payment infrastructure RTP® network in the US, built on the same Vocalink technology that powers the UK’s Faster Payment System. The RTP® network was built for financial institutions of all sizes and serves as a platform for innovation allowing financial institutions to deliver new products and services to their customers. Financial Institutions can integrate into the RTP® network directly, through Third-Party Service Providers (TPSPs), Bankers’ Banks and Corporate Credit Unions.2 The US Federal Reserve will be launching its real-time payment infrastructure FedNowSM in the 2023 – 2024 timeframe.

Globally real-time payments are growing at a double-digit growth rate across all major markets. Adoption of real-time payments will continue to be use case specific, especially for use cases that are underserved by existing payment infrastructures. In the long-term, we should expect real-time payments to be an important part of corporate’s payments mix alongside other traditional payment systems. Like other real-time payment infrastructures globally, the RTP® network has been increasing its transaction limits, which currently stands at $1million. This makes it more relevant for B2B / Corporate payment use cases – a very good example from our client HUNT Companies being the intracompany transfers for efficient deployment of working capital. However, this also means that if you need to make payments with value greater than $1million, you would need an alternative type or method for the time being. You cannot rely on the RTP® network as your only means to make payments and will still require connections for other payment types such as Wire, ACH and international formats.

Recommendations to clients

The world is certainly migrating towards real-time bank connectivity, but organizations will ultimately require various connectivity strategies to fit different geographical and banking technology. In 2022, most real-time Bank APIs are an incremental addition to existing connection methods and formats for both statements and payments. Currently, Bank APIs are not a replacement for other options, which are still required to get a complete picture of prior day statement activity and/or ability to send all required payments. Therefore, my recommendations to my clients always remain the same:

  • Identify and evaluate your data flows.
  • Where does real-time data make sense?
  • Talk to your banking partners and understand their offerings in detail.
  • Ask the question: Do your internal requirements align with the bank’s offerings?
  • Where are you going to house the data that is received/transmitted via the real-time Bank connectivity?
  • Talk to vendors that have teams of people that do this every day and evaluate their perspectives and subject matter expertise.

Find out more details on Bank APIs from the Kyriba Developer Portal, and watch any time an on-demand webinar on everything you need to know about APIs: Bank Connectivity and Beyond.

1 Real-Time Payments: Everything You Need to Know. Paymentsjournal.com. 2021
2 The RTP® Network: For All Financial Institutions. The Clearing House.

Click here to view all blogs by Kyriba

Cash & Treasury Management: Join The World’s Leading Experts in Copenhagen

04-08-2022 | cashandtreasury.dk | treasuryXL | LinkedIn

 

Featuring Chairman of the event, Pieter de Kiewit – Owner of Treasurer Search

 

Be a part of the exclusive Cash & Treasury Management Conference on the 1st of September 2022, which will be held in the extraordinary luxury settings at Hotel d’Angleterre in Copenhagen.

Get updated, expand your network, and get inspiration for optimizing your work within the Cash & Treasury Management community.

 

 

The international program consists of selected and experienced speakers that have proven success within a certain area of Cash & Treasury as e.g., ESG, digitalization and Cash Management. The conference brings together a selected group of high-level senior treasurers from global organizations. Learn from your international peers and join the exclusive network. The event ensures you a full day of new knowledge and inspiration made for high level Treasurers. You get in-depth with the latest trends, valuable content from recognized speakers and extensive networking opportunities.

Among others, these topics have been selected for this year’s conference:

  • Sustainability financing – experiences one year down the road
  • Proprietary data driven cash flow forecasting model
  • How we integrated Nets Group Treasury in to Nexi Group treasury
  • Experiences from a massive hacking attack
  • A career within Novo Nordisk treasury
  • Macroeconomic trends and predictions
REGISTER VIA TREASURYXL

 

As part of TreasuryXL’s network we offer treasurers 25 % discount.

Sign up now and join us 1 September – Remember to use the code when signing up: TreasuryXL25

 

 

Read the program and learn more about participation and sponsorship opportunities: cashandtreasury.dk

 

 

 

 

CFO Perspectives: 5 asset management tactics CFOs should borrow when managing FX risk

01-08-2022 | treasuryXL | Kantox | LinkedIn |

When managing FX risk, CFOs could learn a lot from the world of asset management, where a revolution —led by indexing— has led to huge gains for investors. But how can you apply this to your business’s FX risk strategy? Watch below the video, or read the article!

Credits: Kantox
Source

In the second edition of CFO Perspectives, we’ll draw from our work with CFOs to explore the parallels between asset management and FX risk. We’ll break down the processes and tools used in asset management which can be applied to your currency management strategy, with some spectacular results.

Over the last couple of decades, the world of asset management —an industry with $100 trillion under management— has been turned upside down by a quite unexpected revolution: indexing. Instead of relying on managers’ capacity to time the markets, these firms have automated the selection of assets by quietly replicating stock indexes.

Can CFOs lead a comparable revolution in currency management?

The answer is: yes, they can! Let us see why and how they can accomplish that feat.

Having embraced indexing early on, two leading firms have assets under management north of $15 trillion. What’s more, they have achieved such a spectacular result with fees that are only a fraction of the fees charged by those who embrace speculation. They have saved, and they are still saving, hundreds of billions in costs to investors.

Similar changes may be afoot in the business world. The term ‘exposure under management’, now used by CFOs and treasurers, comes from the expression ‘assets under management’. More importantly, CFOs are eschewing speculation — just like their cousins in asset management.

When managing currency risk in the one-trillion-a-day forward currency market, CFOs are using more and more digitised, automated solutions.

A random walk for risk managers

Once in a while, a lack of currency hedging or even speculating on an FX market move can yield a positive outcome for CFOs. But luck will run out at some point. Sooner or later, blindfolded by overconfidence, ‘speculative’ risk managers flounder in their vain attempt to time currency markets — with disastrous consequences for themselves and their companies.

Like stock prices and the price of other financial assets, exchange rates are not predictable. They follow ‘a random walk’ in which the forecast is set equal to today’s exchange rate (the spot rate). Accordingly, investors —and risk managers— should embrace markets rather than trying to beat them.

This is the thrust of the analogy between the asset management revolution and the coming revolution in FX risk management, an event that will ultimately enhance the strategic role of CFOs.

5 asset management tactics CFOs should borrow when managing FX risk

Let us go beyond the surface and take a closer look at the key tools and processes used by the most successful companies in asset management. These processes provide a useful template for understanding how CFOs will use Currency Management Automation solutions to manage FX.

We can single out at least five main lines of action:

  1. Avoid timing the market. Nine out of ten of the so-called geniuses of the investment world have been ‘destroyed’, in terms of comparative performance, by the more modest index funds. Adding insult to injury, the latter have charged only a fraction of the fees. The no-speculation mantra has proved immensely successful in asset management. If one accepts the view that currency markets also follow a ‘random walk’, then there is no reason to expect a different outcome when it comes to FX risk management.
  2. Achieve operational brilliance. Indexed asset managers know that their success relies on engineering products that achieve operational brilliance by taking the risk of human error out of the equation. Just as indexing is measured by the tracking error between a fund’s rate of return and that of its benchmark, Currency Management Automation is at its core an engineering product that uses Application Programming Interfaces to achieve great precision in currency hedging while allowing managers to seamlessly run the entire FX workflow.
  3. Implement scalable solutions. Successful asset managers use platforms that provide scalability, which makes it possible to quickly and cheaply enter new markets such as bonds, commodities and others, almost anywhere and in many currencies. The same idea applies to FX automation, as CFOs are set to implement scalable, data-driven pricing and hedging solutions to enter new markets, enabling their companies to buy and sell in more currencies — with FX risk systematically under control.
  4. Innovate with a purpose. Indexing is one of the few truly beneficial inventions, a technology that has saved investors hundreds of billions of dollars. Similarly, the purpose of automated FX risk management is to allow firms to confidently ’embrace currencies’, reducing costs to customers and ultimately enhancing the value of the business. When it comes to innovation, purpose matters (see: “CFO Perspectives: 3 ways CFOs can use currencies to boost their business’ value”).
  5. Keep a foot in more than one camp. The world’s largest asset manager keeps a foot in both camps: active asset management and index funds. An entire platform provides a menu from which clients can select whatever financial slice they might fancy. Likewise, CFOs have at their disposal an entire ‘family’ of automated hedging programs and combinations of programs, including balance sheet hedging and a variety of cash-flow hedging programs that respond to their firms’ goals and pricing parameters.

Read the first edition of our CFO Perspectives series, 3 ways CFOs can use currencies to boost their business’s value here.

The State of Treasury in 2022: Research Summary

28-07-2022 | treasuryXL | TIS | LinkedIn |

This blog gives you insights into the state of the treasury function in 2022 and a short list of recommended action items for better management of modern-day treasury operations

Source

About TIS’ Global Research

The insights highlighted in this article are based on a comprehensive set of studies conducted by TIS and our affiliates between Q1 2017 – Q2 2022. During this period, TIS held one-on-one interviews with hundreds of treasury experts and also released a suite of digital surveys that gathered feedback from thousands of financial practitioners regarding technology, staffing, and general operations.

Over the course of our research, TIS partnered closely with a niche team of industry experts, thought leaders, and consultants to interpret the findings. Historical treasury data was also obtained from the Association of Financial Professionals (AFP) and the consulting firm Strategic Treasurer to provide context regarding the evolution of treasury technologies and practices over time. Together, the expertise of our consortium and the extensive feedback collected from industry practitioners has provided us with unparalleled insights into the state of the treasury function in 2022.

While this article serves to highlight the summary findings and recommended action items from our studies, readers that would like more data and information are encouraged to download our full whitepaper for extended coverage.

 

 

Research We Relied Upon

The below surveys, polls, and interviews represent the full suite of research that TIS relied upon to complete our study. Links to the associated research conducted by our affiliates are provided as applicable.

  1. 2017 Strategic Treasurer Technology Use Survey. View Full Results Here
  2. 2020 AFP Strategic Role of Treasury Survey. View Full Results Here
  3. 2020 TIS Rapid Research: Remote Work Capabilities Poll
  4. 2022 TIS Rapid Research: Treasury & Payment Systems Usage Poll
  5. 2022 TIS & Treasury Priorities & Opportunities Survey. View Full Results Here
  6. 100+ One-on-One Interviews with Active Treasury Practitioners Between 2017-2022

 

Key Findings & Highlights

This section provides a brief overview of the key points obtained through our research. For more information on any point of interest, please refer to the full whitepaper.

1. Treasury’s Responsibility List is Constantly Growing: The treasury function has never been more critical to the success of an organization, and this is being recognized internally by key stakeholders. However, treasury practitioners are now being handed additional responsibilities as executives and other departments realize the value they can provide, and nearly 80% of U.S. treasury teams saw their “net” list of responsibilities increase in 2022 vs 2021.

 

 

2. Stakeholders View Treasury as Equally Strategic & Operational: Over 50% of financial practitioners believe the treasury function holds key strategic value, which represents a significant shift from the traditional viewpoint of treasury being mostly an operational function. This shifting perspective is shared widely amongst internal stakeholders like accounting and AP. Today, treasury’s strategic influence is impacting areas like technology adoption, working capital management, bank connectivity, payment processing, and financial reporting.

3. A Saturated Technology Market is Confusing for Treasury: The growing importance of the treasury function and widespread digitalization of global financial operations has resulted in an abundance of Fintech and bank-led software products entering the market. While this has helped foster innovation, data also shows that many treasurers have become confused by the breadth of categories and service offerings in the market, which has led to greater indecision and headache during RFPs and implementations.

 

 

4. The Line Between “Treasury Expert” and “Tech Expert” is Blurring: As the treasury function continues shifting away from paper-based and manual workflows to digitally automated processes and software tools, treasury personnel are finding that their technological proficiency has a significant impact on their ability to perform their core financial responsibilities. This is leading many practitioners to seek out technology-based learning courses in tandem with their more traditional financial education.

5. Fraud & Security Concerns Remain a Critical Issue: In today’s remote and digitally-operated business landscape, tech-savvy criminals are presented with even more opportunities for infiltrating a company’s systems and processes. This is leading to a noted increase in fraudulent attempts across a variety of areas, and treasury teams are continuing to invest heavily in both technology and training to protect themselves.

6. Successful Treasury Teams Collaborate with Other Stakeholders: Research found that many of the most successful treasury teams are proactively working cross-collaboratively with other internal stakeholders and departments like accounting, AP, and IT to accomplish their objectives. These teams are also frequently partnering with external consultants, solution vendors, and bank personnel to ensure alignment and cohesion across all their various systems and operational workflows.

 

Recommended Action Items for Treasury

Based on the findings from our research and interviews, TIS experts have compiled a short list of recommended action items that treasury teams should consider as they seek to better manage their operations in 2022 and beyond. They are as follows:

1. Embrace the Opportunity to Provide Greater Strategic Input: As CFOs and other departments increasingly rely on treasury for reliable data and insights, practitioners should embrace the opportunity to expand their strategic influence internally. In the long run, this ability to provide value in new ways across the organization will benefit treasury when it comes to securing new budget and staffing approvals. However, in order to provide the most visibility and control over their operations without overloading their small teams, treasury must become highly adept at leveraging technology to eliminate manual workflows and repetitive tasks.

2. Becoming Proficient with Technology Should be Non-Negotiable: As technology continues to play a massive role in treasury, it’s crucial for practitioners to familiarize themselves with the core tenets of the modern technology landscape. This does not mean simply researching new buzzwords, but instead seeking to understand the unique differentiators that separate various bank and fintech product offerings in the market. Treasury should also not hesitate to seek out the help of specialized consultants or technology experts for help. Ultimately, treasury’s ability to effectively identify the solutions and capabilities that best fit their company’s needs will save significant time, money, and headache during implementations and migrations.

3. Managing Security for Remote Workforces Requires Extra Care: Given the continued prominence of fraud attacks within the treasury and finance environment, there is no room for error when it comes to protecting a company’s systems, workflows, and personnel. To secure their funds and assets, treasurers must implement multifaceted security controls and protocols that extend beyond the “frontlines” and include executives, administrators, and other “back-office” staff. Combining education and awareness with multiple layers of technology is the only way to gain the upper hand against a new era of tech-savvy criminal.

4. Building Strong Relationships with Other Stakeholders is Crucial: Today, most of the financial systems and workflows that exist within a business are closely intertwined. This means that treasury operations have a significant impact on other departments, and vice versa. Given the extent to which treasury workflows are integrated with those of other stakeholders, it’s vital for treasury to communicate and collaborate effectively with these groups. To ensure total alignment and cohesion, treasurers must be proactive in establishing solid relationships with internal IT, accounting, and AP departments as well as external banking and solution vendors.

5. Ongoing Education is Vital for Staying Ahead of the Curve: Treasury and finance teams have made it clear they are intent on furthering their education and professional skillsets. This professional development is not limited to any one area but encompasses a broad array of topics across both technology and finance. In a digital world, many practitioners are relying on remote seminars and webinars, but in-person events and training are still on the list for many teams as well. Moving forward, it’s highly recommended that practitioners who are serious about their careers undergo regular education and training so that they can stay abreast of new industry developments and innovations.

How Can TIS Help?

The TIS team hopes that the findings highlighted in our research are helpful for teams currently evaluating their own treasury structure, technologies, and workflows. For businesses that view these insights and find themselves in need for enhanced payments, cash management, and banking functionality, we would strongly urge you to consider the solution and services provided by TIS.

Today, TIS is streamlining treasury automation through a cloud-based platform that is uniquely designed to help global organizations optimize global payments and liquidity. In essence, the TIS solution is a multi-channel and multi-bank connectivity ecosystem that streamlines the processing of a company’s payments across all their global entities and systems.

Sitting above an enterprise’s technology stack and connecting with all its back-office, banking, and 3rd party solutions, TIS effectively breaks down department and geographic silos to allow 360-degree payments visibility and control. To date, the more than 200 organizations that have integrated TIS with their global ERPs, TMSs, and banking landscape have achieved near-real-time transparency into their payments and liquidity. This has benefited a broad variety of internal stakeholders and has also enabled them to access information through their platform of choice. Data is available either through dashboards or direct downloads but can also be delivered back to the originating systems.

As part of our client-centric service model, we fully commit our own resources to your implementation and manage the configuration of all required system functionalities, back-office integrations, and bank connections on your behalf. Beginning with project kick-off and lasting through testing and go-live, TIS’ all-inclusive approach to customer support means you never have to rely on internal resources to maintain our solution or integrate it with your existing technology stack.

This systematically controlled payments workflow is managed by TIS for both inbound balance information and outbound payments, and data can be delivered from any back-office system via APIs, direct plug-ins, or agents for transmission to banks and 3rd parties. No matter where you operate from, TIS provides global connectivity and provides the real-time data, control, and workflows needed for treasury to automate and control their end-to-end payments and liquidity processes.

For more information, visit our website or request a demo with one of our experts.

 

marcus evans | 25th Edition Capital Management for Banking Institutions | 26-28 September | London

26-07-2022 | treasuryXL | marcus evans | LinkedIn |

We are proud to announce our media partnership with marcus evans group for the 25th Edition Capital Management for Banking Institutions conference taking place in London on 26-28 of September, 2022.

London, United Kingdom

26 – 28 September 2022 

In recent years, the Basel IV capital regulations and amendments have put banks under large amounts of pressure to place the right measures, controls and models to understand these regulations’ impact on capital. With capital positions weakening, banks were forced to change their focus from capital optimisation to resource deployment, something which delayed Basel IV implementation. Additionally regulations such as the FRTB ad SA-CCR, impacting market and counterparty credit risk had a huge impact on the risk and capital management side. Moreover new regulations related to climate risk and stress testing being introduced recently by the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, meant that banks had to step up their capital related efforts in this area. In the face of new and ongoing regulatory pressures and market conditions banks need to be able to adapt and optimise their capital management practices.

With this in mind, the marcus evans 25th edition Capital Management for Banking Institutions conference held between 26-28 September, 2022 in London, UK will provide practical guidance on how to optimise capital management for banking institutions, with in-depth sessions on ensuring effective compliance with regulations such as the FRTB and SA-CCR, adapting to climate risk, enhancing capital planning, and meeting macroeconomic challenges. These hands-on sessions will be delivered by best-in-class practitioners who are uniquely equipped to pass on their expertise in this field. This guidance will enable banks to rise to the challenge of the new regulatory and macroeconomic conditions, and further develop their capital management and risk frameworks.

Attending This Premier marcus evans Conference Will Enable You To:

  • Overcome regulatory and macroeconomic constraints to optimise capital efficiency
  • Understand and adapt to the Standardised Approach for measuring Counterparty Credit Risk (SA-CCR)
  • Align with Basel IV from a business perspective
  • Link organisational practices and procedures to new regulatory demands
  • Capital Management: Usability of Basel Buffers
  • Unravel the complexities in capital optimisation

Best Practices and Case Studies from:

  • Johannes Langthaler, Senior Group Regulatory Transformation Manager, Raiffeisen Bank International
  • Andrea Cremonino, Head of Portfolio and Pricing Management Analysis and Strategy, UniCredit
  • Barbara Polak-Labit, Capital Management Lead, NatWest Group
  • Brightwell P Zhezi, Head of Economic Capital: Treasury and Capital Management, Standard Bank Group
  • Muhammad Rehan Nasir, Head, ICAAP and Model Validation, Dubai Islamic Bank
  • Thomas Rohold, Head of Financial Resource Management, Senior Vice President, Danske Bank

Special discounts available to Treasury XL subscribers! For more information please contact Ria Kiayia, Digital Media and PR Marketing Executive at [email protected] or visit: https://bit.ly/3M2gpQ0